The present invention refers to a thermally insulated container for storing and transporting material such as vaccine, biological material or the like requiring a substantial constant temperature during a time of several months.
When storing and/or transporting biological and chemical materials one has to consider that these materials will change with time, if they are not stored at a certain, often low, temperature. This is mainly a problem in the developing countries, where the transport of vaccines, serum, blood blood plasma and some enzyme compounds is carried out in an environment, of rather high temperatures. In addition the transport routes are often long and in bad condition, which means that the transport will last long. In the developing countries it is also unusual that vaccines and the like are manufactured in the country, but the demand is almost always covered by import from different industrialized countries. This means that the transport routes will become still longer.
More than 90% of all vaccines require storing at temperatures between +2.degree. and +8.degree. C. and are destroyed rather fast at higher temperatures and also by freezing. As vaccines and the like are very sensitive and as the transport route are long and hard, it is estimated that about 50% of all vaccines are destroyed along the transport route before they reach the final user in the developing country. Today the vaccines are transported between different stations, of which at least the bigger ones are equipped with cooling and freezing plants. These cooling and freezing plants are powered with electric power or alternatively by means of liquid petroleum gas or photogene and they are rather sensitive to disturbance. Due to the defective electricity supply network in the developing countries it is for example not unusual with long power failures.
With the cooling plants which exist today it is therefore important that the transport is carried out as fast as possible. This means that vaccines are flown as far as possible into the developing countries and a net of intermediate storing stations is built up. This of course is expensive and requires a well organized chain of cooling plants.